Eight films I'll be giving a shit about in October

In the kind of move that would be described as "ill-advised" if only someone had actually advised me to do it in the first place, I've decided to give birth to a new monthly feature. Whether I can keep it up for longer than, ooh, a month, remains to be seen, but here it is anyway: all the films released in the first third of the last quarter of 2014 for which I've got a throbbing lob-on.

October is, of course, London Film Festival month, but that deserves a special tumescence of its own so I'll deal with all that elsewhere. In the meantime, let the blood flow south for the following eight films, and if any of them leave me flaccid I'll be upset and regretful that I ever started this appalling erection metaphor.

GONE GIRL

 

It's David Fincher, so, yeah, obviously. Regardless of the fact that it's fifteen years since he made a film I gave a hoot about, you can't deny his style or balls. I haven't read Gone Girl, but everyone else on the tube has so I think I've absorbed it by osmosis. (3rd)

'71

It's only the second best film of the year so far, so damn right I'll be giving a shit about it. In fact here's a massive shit I already gave about it. (10th)

FURY

Men on a mission? I'm there. Tanks? I'm there. Brad Pitt speaking entirely in trailer-friendly platitudes? I'm there. Shia LaBeouf? Oh sorry I'm busy. (24th)

SERENA

"I never thought I'd find you," breathes Jennifer Lawrence to Bradley Cooper, despite the fact that he's standing somewhere near her in pretty much every film she's ever made. This looks good though, right? At the very least it's got Sean Harris in his second film this month, and that's got to be worth celebrating. (24th)

HORNS

How mad does this look? Pity D-Rads' horns didn't grow from under his eyebrows, then nobody would ever have seen them. (29th)

ZAVID BOWIE IS

I didn't make it to the exhibition at the V&A so I guess this is the next best thing, unless Zavid wants to pop round and give me a personal fashion show. Not sure about the hashtag #DavidBowieIs though; looks a little bit like "David Bowels". (31st)

MR TURNER

I'm a bit scared of this because it's about art and I know nothing about art. But this Turner guy spits on his pictures, making him a dangerous rebel; he's the unorthodox, maverick cop of the art movie genre. Sincerely hope his dog Mr Hooch makes an appearance. (31st)

NIGHTCRAWLER

Come on.

COME ON. (31st)

LFF 2014:Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films

If there's an overriding impression with which I came away from Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films, it's that I haven't seen enough Cannon films. If there's a secondary impression with which I came away, it's that I should probably count myself lucky I haven't seen many Cannon films. Quality-vaccuums like The Apple ("the Mount Everest of bad movie musicals"), Mata Hari, with its topless fencing ladies, and Ninja III: The Domination (synopsis: an aerobics teacher is possessed by the evil spirit of a fallen ninja, who uses her body to seek revenge on his killers) all look tremendous, trashy fun, but you just know you'd need a shower after each viewing.

Mark Hartley's affectionate documentary about Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, the over-excitable, over-enthusiastic Israeli cousins behind exploitation factory Cannon Films, is enormously enjoyable, largely due to the sheer number of clips stuffed into its running time. Cannon made the perfect films to be chopped into four-second nuggets and crammed into a documentary because they work so much better as clips than as actual films, and Hartley is acutely aware of this. Almost every mention of another Cannon misfire - and there really are quite a lot - makes you want to pop down to Blockbuster and rent the battered VHS immediately.

But Hartley's doc also includes a preposterous amount of interviews with the people who became Cannon fodder during the studio's turbulent lifetime, and they've all got a story they need to get out of their system. Each expresses disbelief that the pair got away with curling out cinematic turd after cinematic turd for so long - some are downright furious about it - but there's an overarching sense of admiration for the cousins' hubris, spirit and balls. It's just a shame the Go-Go Boys themselves chose not to take part.

Breathlessly tracing Cannon's story from birth to death, Electric Boogaloo rattles through the studio's output like a runaway train. Or, indeed, like Runaway Train. It's a little too frantic at times and fails to go deep into the reasons behind specific decisions, successes or failures, but that just mirrors its subjects' work ethic: get in, get out, move on. It does at least pause long enough to press home what an appalling creature Michael Winner was, how Chuck Norris and Charles Bronson were Cannon's Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and how Golan and Globus managed to fuck up a Superman film even more spectacularly than Zack Snyder. And any documentary that culminates in an examination of the great Lambada movie war of 1990 has to be worth at least a passing glance.

LFF 2014:'71

I visited Belfast for the first time last month. Armed with a pathetically cursory understanding of the Troubles, I took a tour around the very streets in which '71 is set, and had my eyes opened so wide I thought they might fall out. I naïvely thought everyone had made friends, shaken hands and got on with their lives after the Good Friday Agreement, but while Belfast itself is an incredibly welcoming city, it turns out the area between Falls Road and Shankill Road still simmers with an edgy tension. I was amazed to discover there are still peace walls scattered throughout West Belfast: ostensibly insurmountable barriers keeping Protestant Unionists and Catholic Republicans divided in order to reduce the chances of nightly violence.

I mention all this not to prepare you for my holiday snaps but because my ignorance about the city helped me identify in some small way with '71's Gary Hook (Jack O'Connell), one of a platoon of British soldiers shipped off to Belfast to deal with the "deteriorating security situation" in director Yann Demange's astonishing, eviscerating debut feature. Disappointed that they're being deployed in their own country rather than Germany, the platoon have literally no idea how foreign Northern Ireland will be to them; in 1971, the Troubles were still in their infancy and the average Brit was almost as unaware of the situation as I was a couple of months back.

The setup is deliciously simple: Gary becomes separated from his unit during an uncomfortably well-realised riot, and spends the night trying to avoid being murdered by Brit-hating Republicans. Think Die Hard in Norn Iron; an action thriller grounded in the most brutal reality, one where kids run around with rifles or hide guns for IRA killers while the men transport shoddily-constructed bombs around in inadequately sturdy holdalls.

From that first, distressing riot scene, Demange pumps up your blood pressure and refuses to stop pumping until the credits. A chase through the West Belfast streets is Bourne-levels of exciting, but here you know that if the cat catches the mouse there won't be a lengthy scrap; the cat will simply blow the mouse's brains all over the wall. Gary's confusion and desperation are palpable, and O'Connell, a baby-faced hard man, nails the character. He doesn't say much: O'Connell and Demange deliberately stripped back Gary's dialogue, relying on the former's ability to sell emotion physically. One wordless kill is depicted with such surprising tenderness that it's almost heartbreaking.

But the thrills come from Demange's inspired direction, Tat Radcliffe's innovative cinematography and Chris Wyatt's judicious editing. Radcliffe's camera is almost constantly on the move: nobody stands still for long in West Belfast, and Demange makes sure you know it. He opts to go handheld whenever we're with Gary, and does an uncanny job of pulling you into his disorientated, unpredictable world. An amazing, unbroken shot in and around a pub is so brilliantly shot that I'm still scratching my head wondering how it was achieved. Conversely, scenes of shady meetings between Gary's pursuers or the undercover Military Reaction Force (headed by a wiry, lethal Sean Harris) trying to get him back to safety are shot with a calm, measured steadiness.

Gregory Burke's script adds tricksy subplots and touching drama to the action without recourse to cliché or overt politics (the line between good guys and bad guys is necessarily blurred), and switches from disarming moments of light-heartedness to gut-wrenching horror, sometimes in the space of a single frame. It's no wonder '71 is nominated at this year's London Film Festival for the Sutherland Award for best first feature - it's one of the tensest, most satisfying thrillers for a long time. That it manages to frame a rollercoaster action film in a recognisable and sensitive milieu is remarkable; that it does it so well is nothing short of miraculous.

That's Rogertainment! Rogisode 7: The Wild Geese

The death of director Andrew V McLaglen last month prompted me to make his first collaboration with Roger Moore my next foray into the wild, weird world of Rogertainment. McLaglen and Moore would become firm friends, going on to make two more films together over the next couple of years: North Sea Hijack (1979) and The Sea Wolves (1980), but 1978's The Wild Geese would be the film for which McLaglen was most fondly remembered.

Like an irony-free Expendables movie, The Wild Geese sees Richards Burton and Harris assembling a creaky team of near-arthritic ex-soldiers tasked with quietly dropping into the middle of an African warzone and extracting an imprisoned leader before their Ovaltine gets cold. The mission is outlined in five ruthlessly efficient minutes at the film's opening, and the next hour concerns the recruitment and training of the coffin-dodging killing machines.

Don't be fooled: these geese could turn wild at any moment

It's all good, Boys' Own fun and there are some great lines: next time I see a pensioner lying down I fully intend to bellow "ONYOURFEETYOUFACKIN'ABORTION!" like Regimental Sergeant Major Sandy Young. But then, as I've discovered with a lot of Rog's films, the second half is a let-down. Like the cast, the operation experiences more than a few wrinkles, but it's a long and arduous slog to the interminable climax. And for a film set in Africa and shot in South Africa during apartheid its race politics are clumsy at best, amounting to a two-minute dialogue between Hardy Krüger's racist white South African and Winston Ntshona's black president, which goes something like:

WHITE MAN

I hate you because you're black

BLACK MAN

But if we could all just get along everything would be great

WHITE MAN

Hey that's right, good idea, you're all right you are

To hammer home this message of peace and multiracial harmony, the Wild Geese later mow down an almost inexhaustible supply of black bad guys who leap from the bushes screaming unintelligibly.

See? Wild as fuck, these geese

The cast are good value though, and it's always fun to spot the army of Bond alumni working on British films of the 1970s. Keep an eye out for Glyn Baker as Esposito - here he's working with the contemporary 007; nine years later he'd play 002 in the pre-title sequence of The Living Daylights alongside Timothy Dalton.

In terms of Rogertainment, The Wild Geese is a sadly disappointing affair. Despite Moore's prominence on the film's poster (you can only imagine the months of negotiations that must have gone on to result in that bizarre arrangement of the stars' faces and names), the film really belongs to Burton and Harris. Rog's character, gloriously introduced by Burton's as "Shawn Fynn, very good looking", is meant to be crucial to the mission but proves largely irrelevant, unless you need someone to spray an army of extras with machine gun fire while chewing on an improbably large stogie.

Moore's first scene sees him attempting to emulate his old chum Michael Caine with a Get Carteresque turn wherein he forces the nephew of a mob boss to eat a bag of heroin, but he isn't nearly menacing enough to pull it off and does nothing else memorable in the remaining running time. Having tried to set Fynn up as a proper bastard not to be fucked with, McLaglen just lets Rog go back to being a charming chap with a shooter for the rest of the film, the director no doubt preoccupied with keeping Burton and Harris away from the booze cabinet for as long as possible. McLaglen would make the same mistake with Moore in North Sea Hijack, trying to convince us he's more demonic than delightful; a future Rogisode will determine whether the duo complete their miscasting hat-trick with The Sea Wolves.

So it's hard to recommend The Wild Geese either as a standalone film or an example of the finest work of The Greatest Living Englishman. Rog isn't in it enough, has too little to do and doesn't even do that very well, so it's a mere two Rogers on the Rogometer.

I know there's good in him though, I can feel it, so I will continue my quest to seek out his greatness. He can't hide it forever.

A big fat Roger to Chris and Gilly Laverty for the Blu-ray. There's more Rogertainment here, but I warn you, it's not pretty.

20,000 Days On Earth

For anyone in the mood for an imaginary day in the crazy life of Nic Cage, this could have been Christmas. Imagine someone of Cage's special brand of specialness attempting to summarise his fears, his needs, his passions and his philosophy on life in the space of a hundred-minute autobiopic; cinema would never have been the same again. Alas, accurate spelling gets in the way once more, damn it, and the subject of 20,000 Days On Earth isn't Nic Cage but Nick Cave, a singer-songwriter who may - like his near-namesake - boast a forehead the size of a tectonic plate, but therein the similarities end.

That said, this probably is Christmas for Cavers, or Cavehards, or Cavemen, or whatever Cave's fans call themselves. It's a semi-fictionalised, semi-serious semi-documentary made by Nick Cave, about Nick Cave, for Nick Cave, and if anyone else likes it then that's a bonus for Nick Cave. The film concerns the growling Australian cogitating on the passage of time as he hits his 20,000th day on Earth, but rather than watching him shopping for denture tablets and watching Lorraine, we're instead invited into Cave's mind-cave: a place where he opens up to a shrink, chats to the spirits of previous collaborators like Kylie Minogue and Ray Winstone, records demos with his band, performs a gig and watches Scarface with his kids, all in the space of 24 hours.

It's an interesting way to present an investigation of an artist: neither objective documentary nor complete work of fiction, its form negates the detachment from its subject that the film you'd expect demands, and instead you're swept up in the crashing, clashing waves of Cave's need to be accepted and loved and his need to do his own thing. With the help of directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, he lays out his narcissism, his paranoia, his fear of mortality and his belief in the immortality of art, sprays a lovely glossy sheen over the lot of it and presents it as another performance, leaving you none the wiser as to just who or what Nick Cave is. You suspect that's exactly what he's aiming for.

There's more than a little pretentious philosophising, and the very nature of the film makes you wonder whether Cave is looking deep into his psyche or just staring up his own arsehole, but there's enough here to entertain the casual viewer. Fans will love it and haters gonna hate, but Cave comes across as a sardonic, passionate performer with an outlook on life many will recognise as similar to their own. I don't know if it's art and I don't know if I like it, but I haven't seen anything remotely similar before, and that's as good a recommendation as any. Still kind of wish it was about Nic Cage though.

Ten educational title suggestionsfor the next Bourne film

There's a new Bourne film on the cards from Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon, which is great news if you like the Bourne films I suppose. Let's be honest, it can't be any worse than The Bourne Legacy.

Obviously the most important consideration is what they're going to call it, and I don't know about you but I've always felt the Bourne films' titles to be a bit simplistic. So I've raided my Oxford Junior Illustrated Dictionary to come up with ten suggestions designed to a) be relevant to the plot, and b) teach everyone a new word. Let's vocabulate!

In which Bourne attempts to sell his unique skills to two competing buyers who, between them, force him to lower his price.

In which it is revealed that Aaron Cross was grown from within Jason Bourne.

In which Bourne, in hiding, makes a living as a botanist bemoaning the fact that he only has spores of one kind. Possibly not the most thrilling Bourne film.

In which Bourne canters about with a long face, eating hay.

In which Bourne must stop enemy agents from stealing the relics of long-dead saints from his local church.

In which Bourne masquerades as a European who makes a fortune in India.

In which Bourne, stranded miles from civilisation, kills an enemy agent and is forced to eat his raw flesh to survive.

In which Bourne attempts to answer the question of why God permits the manifestation of evil.

In which the key to proving Bourne's innocence depends on the forensic examination of microscopic slivers of wood.

Jeremy Renner stars in this vapid and unsophisticated Bourne film.
Oh no hang on that was The Bourne Legacy.

Glad to see Robert Downey Jr's finally got his mumbling problem under control

Full trailer for The Judge here.

Richard Kiel1939-2014

"                                          "

- Jaws, The Spy Who Loved Me / Moonraker

The Guest

In an ideal world, none of us would be spending this week talking about Scottish independence, royal babies or new-fangled technowatches, because all of those things are just silly. Instead we should all be talking about The Guest, a film which is equally as silly as all those things - like, REALLY silly - but is also totally, 100% aware of it. I mean, that bag of inbred cells that's currently fourth in line to the throne has literally no clue how silly it is. None whatsoever.

Arriving from nowhere and probably, due to its low marketing budget and lack of big names, heading back there in a matter of days, The Guest is a tremendous, bonkers and deliriously retro thriller that's the perfect antidote to the pompous pish that's hogging screen space at cinemas in this arid swathe of the movie calendar. It's absolute rubbish, but it's the most gloriously entertaining rubbish I've seen for an achingly long time.

Mysterious stranger and former soldier David rocks up at the home of his deceased warbuddy, swiftly inveigling himself into the lives of mom, dad, bullied younger brother and hormone-soaked sister, and the fact that they more or less take him in without question gives you some idea of how seriously to take this film. It's as if nobody in the family has ever seen a movie about a mysterious stranger, or indeed any movie at all, ever. After a first act that takes a little too long to say not much, things move from mundane to mental, not least as the film's brakes fail and it barrels wildly towards its ludicrously stylised climax.

It's hard to judge how far horror hacks Simon Barrett (writing) and Adam Wingard (directing) intend The Guest to be deliberately funny: it's not a comedy by any stretch, but it's packed full of more cheese than a Frenchman's fridge, and given the right circumstances - say, a Friday night in a packed cinema after a few beers - it nails a tone that renders it insanely joyous. The mood is defiantly '80s, bolstered by a terrific synth score that sounds like the b-sides of everything on the Drive soundtrack and a wodge of cheerfully ironic slo-mo sequences (two words: laundry basket). Nods to the likes of Commando and The Terminator abound, and it's that audience - the one that's been disappointed by the failure of the Expendables films to recapture a schlocky, Cannon-era '80s spirit - that will invite The Guest into their hearts. There's a latticework of plot holes and a disappointing attempt to explain exactly what the chuff is going on, but if it's a worthy chin-stroker you're after then you're in the wrong film. I'm sure Night Moves is still on somewhere.

Star Dan Stevens, thus far famous for appearing in some TV show or other and for manually relieving the sexual frustrations of our transatlantic cousins, cements his rep as a name to watch. Apparently the result of a genetic experiment to crossbreed Bradley Cooper and Daniel Craig, he's not yet as good as either, but have patience. If his agent hasn't already had a phone call from a breathless Barbara Broccoli, I'll be amazed; he's the epicentre of The Guest's mirthquake and has presence to burn.

Distributors Icon can't hope to slay the box office with The Guest, but the film is destined to find its true purpose in the home entertainment market. Until then, it is incumbent upon you all to seek it out at your nearest picture house before it disappears, so that come next week - if there's any justice in the world - all of us are talking about it.

Two Days, One Night and the BBFC's spoiler-happy guidelines

*** WARNING ***

Contains spoilers for Two Days, One Night

I went to see the Dardennes brothers' tremendous Two Days, One Night with the great unwashed of the Curzon Soho last week. It's riveting stuff: as a woman swallowing every last morsel of pride in order to beg her colleagues for her job back, Marion Cotillard makes you work as hard as she does for results.

As a foreign language arthouse film, Two Days, One Night arguably attracts a certain type of audience: one who, at the very least, has gone to the trouble of finding out the thrust of the story in order to decide whether or not to see it. So it's fair to suggest that most people watching the film in a cinema know that it concerns Cotillard's character, Sandra, struggling to get her job back by pleading with her workmates to convince them to forego their bonus.

What, then, does that audience think when the words "suicide attempt" appear on screen as a warning about the film's content, alongside the BBFC's '15' certificate, mere seconds before it starts? I can't speak for everyone, but my own thoughts went something along the lines of: "Oh right, so at some point things will get so bad that Sandra will try to kill herself. I'll just sit here with that information stored away, waiting for it to happen, shall I? THANKS A RUDDY BUNCH, THE BBFC."

Also it turns out her husband was dead all along

Maybe I'm overreacting, but to me this seems like a counterproductive measure by our friends at 3 Soho Square. Of course it's important to protect sensitive viewers from potentially upsetting material, but is the 15 certificate alone not enough to warn audiences of "adult themes"?

The BBFC's new Classification Guidelines, which are the result of a lengthy public consultation, have the following to say about suicide:

"Portrayals of potentially dangerous behaviour (especially relating to hanging, suicide and self-harm) which children and young people may potentially copy, will be cut if a higher classification is not appropriate."

In the case of Two Days, One Night, that higher classification was deemed appropriate and the film was passed uncut with a 15 certificate. Some time ago the BBFC introduced BBFCinsight, a feature on their website which goes into detail about why a given film was passed with a given certificate, and so if you want to know precisely why Two Days, One Night is a 15 you can find out here. Now I have no problem with this, and in fact have used BBFCinsight a few times to answer the concerns of friends who want to take their kids to the cinema but don't want them to be subjected to, for example, domestic abuse, animal cruelty or Shia Labeouf.

But with that information available online, is it also necessary to summarise it in cinemas on the black card when it reveals crucial plot details? The "suicide attempt" warning also appears in the summary at the top of Two Days, One Night's BBFC page, making it even easier to have your experience spoiled:

I contacted the BBFC to question the wisdom of their decision, and was told that

"the specific details of the event - i.e. exactly who the suicide attempt concerned, where it occurred in the film and other details - are not mentioned."

But let's be honest: an audience who knows what Two Days, One Night is about doesn't have to make a herculean leap of reasoning to infer that it's probably the character undergoing an emotionally turbulent 48 hours who will, at some point, give up in the most final way. What's more, the suicide isn't attempted for a good hour or so, so no matter how successful or not Sandra is in persuading her colleagues to give up their bonus so she can earn a living, we spend two-thirds of the running time waiting for her to hit rock bottom. The emotional impact of the journey we're on, which is at the heart of the film's success, is lessened by the knowledge of what's to come.

The BBFC are very keen to trumpet BBFCinsight, and even commissioned this cheery video to promote it:


You'll notice the video posits that we already live "in a world overloaded with information", and that BBFCinsight exists "so that you can get the lowdown, then sit down, relax and enjoy the film." I'd be tempted to argue that, in the case of Two Days, One Night, the BBFC have overloaded the audience with more unnecessary information, and have in fact negatively affected our capacity to relax and enjoy the film.

I don't want to appear insensitive towards the issues the BBFC are attempting to address here, and I'm not for a moment suggesting that the mass enjoyment of a film is more important than the prevention of even one suicide. But I'd be fascinated to know exactly how many people, after arranging a trip out to the cinema, buying their tickets and popcorn and taking their seats, made the decision to get up and leave with seconds to go before the film starts based entirely on the information given on the black card. I'd hazard a guess that it's approximately zero, while the muttering that immediately followed the certificate's appearance in the Curzon Soho last week suggests that the number of people browned off by the appearance of an unavoidable plot spoiler is significantly higher.

The BBFC have an unenviable job trying to get the balance right when classifying films, and I'm not about to tear them a new one on the basis of one film. I'm not criticising Two Days, One Night's classification, nor the BBFC's explanation for it, but I would hope that they carefully consider whether revealing that information to an audience unable to avoid it is the best course of action when it has the potential to diminish the cinematic experience.

36 tweets I drafted for this morning's London Film Festival launch that I didn't get to use because the films aren't showing

Over the last week or so I've gone through my annual ritual of scouring film festival roundups from the past few months in order to predict what might be on at this year's London Film Festival. Based on this information, plus a few wild guesses about stuff that's released later this year and so hey why not, I drafted 51 tweets which I intended to deploy during this morning's LFF Press Launch in order to make it look like I had my finger on the pulse of cutting-edge movie journalism. I even pestered the BFI to find out whether they intended to use #LFF or #LFF2014 as the official hashtag, the outcome of which was that I had to delete "2014" 51 times.

By and large, the entire exercise was a disaster. I was always uncertain as to whether or not my attempt to successfully predict one fifth of the festival's output was an act of idiocy (I was always going to miss some biggies), vanity (LOOK AT ME I'M HERE AT GROUND ZERO AS IT HAPPENS) or both, but I soldiered on nevertheless. At least six films had already been announced, so I tweeted those before the launch, then settled in with the obligatory pastry and opened up my drafts.

In the interests of "colour", here is a pastry a bit like the one I ate

Immediately I realised this was essentially going to be the world's worst game of bingo. The films we already knew about were announced, followed by a couple of successful guesses (thank fuck for Foxcatcher and Whiplash), and then a deluge of movies I'd never heard of or come across in my research. My phone lay flaccid and untouched in my lap like a pathetic, useless penis. Which, incidentally, is oh no hang on that's another story.

Out of 45 remaining tweets, I was able to publish nine. NINE. Out of 245 films. I am officially the worst forecaster of LFF screenings, like, ever. I'm the Michael Fish of the film festival circuit. Now you might think that perhaps the BFI is to blame; after all, why isn't Birdman showing? Or The Clouds Of Sils Maria? Or 99 Homes, or The Theory Of Everything, or She's Funny That Way, or Olive Kitteridge, or A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence, most of which have been lauded at Cannes, Venice and elsewhere this year? Even Ryan Gosling's widely-despised directorial debut Lost River is nowhere to be found in the pages of the programme.

No existence-contemplating pigeons for you, London

Well, you might think that, but obviously you'd be as wrong as I was. There's plenty to get your teeth into at the 58th London Film Festival, including but not limited to The Imitation Game, Fury, the aforementioned Foxcatcher and Whiplash, Wild, Mr. Turner, Wild Tales, The Salvation, The White Haired Witch Of Lunar Kingdom, The Duke Of Burgundy, The Falling, The Keeping Room, The New Girlfriend, Son Of A Gun, '71 and It Follows, all of which look fantastic, and all of which (plus truckloads more) can be found at the official LFF website.

But I couldn't let the remaining 36 tweets go to waste. They may not be gold and they sure as shit won't win any awards for Excellence In Tweeting (or in Film Festival Programme Predicting), but I did spend ages writing them, and even if some of them are preposterous (Guy Ritchie's The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was, admittedly, something of a long shot) I'm going to put them out there where they belong. By which I mean on a blog that almost nobody reads.

So sit back, relax and enjoy ill-informed descriptions of 36 films you won't be seeing at the 2014 London Film Festival:

A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence: [spoiler warning] a pigeon sits on a branch reflecting on existence #LFF 

Lost River: Ryan Gosling's Cannes-infuriating directorial debut #LFF 

The Disappearance Of Eleanor Rigby: first of a trilogy telling 1 story from 3 perspectives, with Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy #LFF 

The Search: Michel Hazanavicius follows The Artist with Chechnya-set war drama. Unlikely to feature comedy dog #LFF 

Clouds Of Sils Maria: Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart and Chloe Moretz headline Cannes-pleasing drama #LFF 

The Voices: Ryan Rodney Reynolds argues with his pets. Cat prefers Gosling, dog is Triple-R all the way #LFF 

Olive Kitteridge: Lisa Cholodenko's epic four-part miniseries starring Frances McDormand, Richard Jenkins and Bill Murray #LFF 

Black Sea: treasure-hunting misfits under the command of Jude Law join the search for his career #LFF 

The Book Of Life: animated fantasy rom-com #LFF 

The Judge: Bob Downey Jr, Bob Duvall, Billy Bob Thornton and Vera Bob Farmiga star in legal com-dram #LFF 

What We Do In The Shadows: horror comedy vampire mockumentary with Jemaine Clement. FRIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS LOL #LFF 

All Is By My Side: Largely fictitious Jimi Hendrix biopic starring Andre 3000, whatever that is #LFF 

The Homesman: Tommy Lee Jones-directed western. Sounds boring #LFF 

The Skeleton Twins: Kristen Wiig is in it. Everything else is immaterial #LFF 

Life Itself: doc about the late great Roger Ebert, based on his memoirs and optioned before his death #LFF 

The Third Person: Paul Haggis weaves three stories together for a film that, by all accounts, is a third as good as it should be #LFF 

Interstellar: Chris Nolan's touching paean to reassuringly expensive French lager #LFF 

Horns: Harry Potter and the Forehead of Protuberances #LFF 

Hyena: good cop bad cop shenanigans (minus the good cops) in leafy West London #LFF 

Exodus: Gods And Kings: Christian Bale blows the makeup budget in Ridley Scott's God-botherer #LFF 

The Man From U.N.C.L.E.: Guy Ritchie directs this ugh sorry I can't go on #LFF 

Unbroken: Angelina Jolie's sequel to Unbreakable (note to self: check this before tweeting) #LFF 

Ex Machina: Alex Garland, Oscar Isaac, robots. It had me at Alex Garland, Oscar Isaac, robots #LFF 

Inherent Vice: PT Anderson's latest attempt to impress me (actually Punch Drunk Love was quite good) #LFF 

Birdman: like Batman but birdier #LFF 

Enemy: remember Denis Villeneuve's last Jake Gyllenhaal-starrer, Prisoners? Hope this is better #LFF 

Fifty Shades Of Grey: the LFF is definitely not dumbing down, no way #LFF 

99 Homes: Andrew Garfield sells his soul to Michael Shannon to avoid more Spider-Man films, oops, I mean, to keep his home #LFF 

Good Kill: Ethan Hawke (autocorrect: Ethanol Hawkesbury) and January Jones star in Andrew Niccol's drone pilot thriller #LFF 

The Look Of Silence: Joshua Oppenheimer's follow-up to The Act Of Killing #LFF 

Cymbeline: The Milla Jovovich-starring Shakespeare adaptation the world's been waiting for #LFF 

Burying The Ex: horny zom-com from JOE FLIPPING DANTE #LFF 

She's Funny That Way: highbrow festival favourites Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston reunited for the first time since Marley & Me #LFF 

The Sound And The Fury: James Franco's experimental take on another of William Faulkner's "unfilmable" books #LFF 

Reality: more surreal gubbins from crackpot Rubber director Quentin Dupieux #LFF 

The Theory Of Everything: Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones compare cheekbones in Stephen Hawking biopic #LFF

I'm calling it now: Fifty Shades Of Grey for the Surprise Film.